Sovereignty and the Environment in Charlemagne's Empire

Abstract

For more than a hundred years, from the last quarter of the eighth to the end of the ninth century CE, the Carolingian empire held sway over most of western Europe. Sovereignty and the Environment in Charlemagne’s Empire argues that making better Christians (correctio) intertwined with controlling nature in the imperial ideology of this new pan-European polity. The thesis describes how Charlemagne, the first Carolingian emperor, and the ecclesiastics who advised him, fashioned this ideology of ecological control to justify their authority and hold together the fissile, recently annexed imperial peripheries. In the late eighth century supervision and domination of the environment became integral to the Carolingian mission to Christianize and “redeem” lands and peoples. The dissertation uncovers a complex of ideas about righteous control of environments that helped to justify Carolingian domination that it calls “Carolingian ecological sovereignty.” It presents the key Carolingian notion of the empire as a human-managed garden or gamepark in its introduction. Chapter one examines the “constitutional” documents of the Carolingian empire to demonstrate that the pursuit of “better” biblical exegesis (especially commentaries on the book of Genesis) was a political undertaking meant to bolster Charlemagne’s role as the “new Adam,” who would master nature. Chapters two and three expound a commentary on Genesis (Explanatio sex dierum) written by Wigbod, one of the most important ecclesiastics at the royal Frankish court from the 780s. Chapter two argues that trees were the ideal metaphor for obedience both to God and to Carolingian lords, while chapter three examines Wigbod’s exposition of sentience in humans and animals to show how the subjugation and supervision of both upheld correctio in the Carolingian realm. Chapter four examines the writings of Alcuin of York and Theodulf of Orléans, like Wigbod close advisors of Charlemagne, to expose a discourse of “happy kingdoms.” This discourse represented the empire as a garden-paradise, reflecting Wigbod’s exegesis, and saw in prevailing environmental conditions the measure of Charlemagne’s success or failure. The remaining two chapters assess the impact in practice of “Carolingian ecological sovereignty.” Chapter five establishes that abstract notions of eco-authority influenced Charlemagne’s program of bridge building and canal trenching in Frankish waterways. Reading Carolingian texts (like the capitulary De villis) alongside paleoclimatology and bioarchaeological data, chapter six traces the dissemination of peaches and peach trees as outcomes of the Carolingian “renewal” (renovatio) of Roman culture, arguing that Charlemagne wanted to grow peaches in northern Europe because of their Roman “imperial” attributes and prestige. This dissertation demonstrates the Carolingians employed control of the environment to reinforce Frankish sovereignty over vast territories, permanently transforming European ecosystems and modeling practices for subsequent empires.